Preconceptions of participation: Municipal care professionals’ expectations of co-design processes

Participatory Design (PD) stems from early workplace projects where new technology and its impact were explored together with workers. While there is a long history of applying PD in the care domain, there is a lack of knowledge of professional care actors’ perspectives and understandings of Participation. To address this, we have explored how municipal care professionals in Sweden understand, perceive and attribute value to participation and how participation unfolds in their organizations. The paper presents a qualitative analysis of six workshops where about 50 care workers and managers at each workshop (i.e. ~300 care professionals in total) have explored and discussed how they and their organizations understand and work with participation and participatory processes. Based on the analysis, this paper provides researchers with insights on how municipal care actors perceive participation, and how that can affect co-design initiatives in the care domain.